Media, Ideology, and the Spiral of Silence

By Hans L Zetterberg

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann has been a journalist, an opinion pollster, a market researcher, an adviser to
statesmen, and a university professor. She has built institutions such as the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach and the Institut für
Publizistik in Mainz. She has made lasting contributions to social science, most
notably the theory of the spiral of silence
[1]. To those of us who have
tampered in similar areas she is an inspiration. To me personally she has
demonstrated that it is possible to live a richer and fuller life in the service
of reason and knowledge, and do it in a broader way than is conceived by the
confines of an academic discipline — and still make top-level contributions in
every undertaking.

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
has a full view of society. Max Weber
"institutional realms," Lebensordnungen, (life-orders) and Wertsphären
(value-spheres) and they seem to constitute his full view of society.[2]
They are the economic, political, intellectual (scientific), religious,
familial, and erotic life-orders and spheres of life-activity and value, each
with Eigengesetzlichkeit, XE "Eigengesetzlichkeit" that is, an internal
and lawful autonomy. We cope rentlessly with them through our manipulations and
escapes and above all by the never ending process of rationalization. In the
Allensbach archives you find studies on topics from all these life-orders. I do
not think that other academics ever can understand the excitements and insights
of a pollster XE "pollsters:everyday experience" who week after week sees new
analyses of interviews from all these life-orders and value-spheres grow and
pass across his or her desk. Noelle-Neumann knows.

Mighty media

Weber thought that the bureaucracies and the markets more
than other structures shape the modern society. Had he lived today he might have
added the mass media as a third co-author of our destiny. There are many
reasons to include the media among the dominant institutions.

Mass-media influence has long been a much-favored
topic of discussion. At the birth of any new medium, be it the press, radio, or
television, most people seem to assume that it will exert an immense and direct
influence on citizens’ opinions and conduct. Book-printing was called the
“heavenly art” by the early Protestants, since it had enabled Luther to spread his doctrines and print a German Bible. But printing — that is,
duplicating text — is an instrument that may also be used by the opponent in a
dispute. It was not long before printing was used just as effectively by
Ignatius Loyola as by Martin Luther.

Voltaire claimed that the
printed word exerted no influence at all on history. The Protestants’ victory in
the Reformation, he thought, was due more to decisions taken by the German
princes than to all the printed matter produced by the reformers. It was the
sword, not the pen, that shaped history. Perhaps he propounded this thesis of
the impotence of words largely in order to show that it was a ridiculous waste
for the government to engage in censorship. “Between five and six thousand
pamphlets against Louis XIV were printed in Holland, and none of them helped him
to lose the battles of Blenheim, Turin and Ramillies,” Voltaire wrote.

The long-term effects on politics of the mass
media’s selection of news and opinions differ from the short-term ones. Voltaire’s analysis is only half complete. He should also have
investigated how the princes incorporated in their decisions the climate of
opinion created by Protestant publications. His conclusion would then have been
that the sword that is regarded as legitimate by the people creates more
enduring history than the sword that serves merely as an expression of the
prince’s use of naked power. for the opinions voiced in the media — however
circumscribed they may be — in many respects determine how the world’s rulers
can use their instruments of power. To be effective, power must be confirmed in
some way, and in this process of confirmation the media play an important role.

Educated people who are aware of the historical wealth of circumstances and
standpoints on numerous different topics usually regard the mass media with
disrespect. They know that the mass media’s range of subjects and values is
restricted, in the literal sense of the word. For the truly ignorant the media
may, of course, be informative; but for the truly knowledgeable they blunt the
intellect. The
conversations, works of art, ideas, devotions and consensus between opposing
parties that make up the core of a civilization extend far beyond, and far more
deeply than, the potential scope of the mass media.

Simultaneously, it should be said that the media
help the educated and uneducated alike to recognize society’s élites. The media
make the holders of powerful political positions visible, in all their glory and
frailty. The media also identify
scientific precursors, industrial matadors,
geniuses of art and literature, and magnates of the religious spirit. The élites
therefore have a highly ambivalent attitude towards the media. They despise them
for their narrowness of outlook and their ignorance — and they are attracted by
them for their ability to convey fame and confirm their position in society.

When members of the élite are recruited to serve
on the boards of newspapers they are reluctant to use their powers in any way to
displease the journalists since they need the goodwill of the latter in their
other pursuits. Newspaper boards are notoriously weak in anything that affects
the journalists. The are much tougher on the typesetters and printers.

The interplay between journalists and people in
power is one of mutual dependence and perfidy. Journalists light up the way for
society’s top dogs. But they also make merciless use of their contacts with the
holders of power. They are exploited and they exploit.

All this was known at least a century ago.

Arbiters of Media
Content

During the American Civil War, the northern
states received the support of public opinion in Britain. But the leading London
newspapers argued that Britain should help the Confederate states. Pro-North
opinion found it difficult to gain press coverage.

A German-born immigrant journalist and social
debater in London by the name of Karl Marx was asked by friends in
Vienna why there was such disparity of opinion between what the newspapers said
and what people thought. Did press and public opinion differ?

Marx replied with an article that was published on Christmas Day 1861
in the Vienna newspaper Die Presse. Its analysis is simple and
straightforward. Granted, the public British attitude that one should help the
southern states was a minority opinion, but one that was well represented in the
ruling class — and particularly by the prime minister, Viscount Henry Palmerston who dominated British politics. By means of their contacts
with the press through relatives, acquaintances, politicians and businessmen,
the opinions of the Palmerston circle became those of the press as well. Marx wrote:

Consider the London press. At its head stands
The Times, whose chief editor, B. Lowe, is a subordinate member of the
cabinet and a mere creature of Palmerston. The Principal Editor of Punch
was accommodated by Palmerston with a seat on the Board of Health and an annual
salary of a thousand pounds sterling. The Morning Post is in part
Palmerston’s private property.... The Morning Advertiser is the joint
property of the licensed victuallers.... The editor, Mr Grant, has had the
honour to get invited to Palmerston’s private soirées.... It must be added that
the pious patrons of this liquor-journal stand under the ruling rod of the Earl
of Shaftesbury and that Shaftesbury is Palmerston’s son-in-law[3].

One striking and valuable part of Marx’ analysis is the observation that the content of the media determined by networks was determined by a small network. Gaining a
hearing in the contemporary London press seems to be virtually identical with
being listened to and having one’s opinions accepted by press owners. For Marx,
the truth was plain: it was the media barons and their networks that determined
whose voice and which opinions should be heard. When the owners belonged to the
same network, they were unanimous.

The liberal press ideology that now prevails in the Western world has the same starting-point.
Diversity in the press can be achieved only through a multiplicity of owners
representing different interests. For Marx was wrong in believing that all owners necessarily have the same
interests.

Enter Social Research

By the middle of the twentieth century, the
importance of the media was being toned down. It had long been known in a
general way that no one reads everything, and no one pays attention to all he
reads. Attention is drawn mostly to media content representing threats to the fabric of social life:
crime and violence, deceit in high places, accidents and disasters, divorce and
sexual excesses among the celebrated, death or sickness of leaders, war and
revolutions. This was now confirmed by research. Normal social functioning was
not the most selling topic from journalists — clean air does not make news,
polluted air does.

Convincing research reports also appeared showing
how people read newspapers with great discrimination and remember radio and TV
programs, if at all, in a highly selective way, according to their own interests
and the opinions or prejudices they had already formed. The editorial staff and the advertising department
might have produced one newspaper, but the reader made another, smaller paper by
a process of selection and sifting. And this smaller paper contains practically no compelling call to form new opinions and
embark on new behaviors. Joseph Klapper concluded in a much
quoted review of empirical studies that “mass communications ordinarily do not
serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects.[4]”
Other researchers emphasized that informal groups or opinion leaders in circles
of acquaintances filtered and reinterpreted the media’s message XE "media
impact:filtered by opionion leaders" . Moreover, these opinion leaders differed
from topic to topic. Media influence was thus not as direct as was previously
thought.[5]

Nowadays, the idea of the mighty media is once
more a focus but in a new, more sophisticated guise. Among others, attention is
devoted to ideas brought up in Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s theory of and research into the “spiral of silence”. This theory deals in a
technical and narrow sense with a series of microsociological propositions,
namely —

man’s propensity to scan for clues to the public
opinions prevailing in the circles where he moves;

the propensity in these circles to isolate
individuals who express opinions that deviate from the public opinions;

the fear of isolation that man usually
experiences.

The consequences of these propositions for the
formation of public opinion are considerable. It is noteworthy that the impact
of the theory has gone well beyond these microsociological propositions and has
ended with macrosociological conclusions on the influence of the media.

When large groups of citizens — even, sometimes,
the majority — rely on the media to tell them which opinions prevail, they do
not always find their own opinions confirmed. Instead, they are given the
editorial staffs’ special selection. People then lose their self-confidence,
fear isolation, and withdraw from conversations, thereby contributing to the
premature demise of their own opinions. They may conceivably retain these
opinions, but they keep them to themselves. They neither expose them, nor try to
convince others, nor fight for them. Thus media are crucial in the selection of
surviving public opinions.

To have inspired a reevaluation of the might of
the media is a major achievement of this theory. It remains so regardless of the
fate of particular microsociological propositions in the theory in the future
march of scientific progress, and it remains so regardless of the fact that some
people misunderstand the theory of the spiral of silence when they discuss the
power of the media. For the unit of analysis in the microsociological theory of
opinion expression are the persons. The
unit of analysis in the macrosociologcal
discussion of media power are usually various the public opinions.

The legacy of the theory in the discussion of
media power can be summarized in this way: When citizens reach for their
newspapers, seeking news, entertainment, and potential subjects of conversation
for the day, support for their own interests and views is not always
forthcoming. Instead, they find the journalists’ selection of subjects and
views. Failing to find their own opinions in the newspaper gives pause to many
readers. They may even lose their self-confidence and withhold their own views
from everyday conversations. What they really believe in then falls into a
spiral of silence.

In the struggle for survival among opinions, the
media thus plays a decisive role. Let us elaborate.

How the public knows
public opinion

Opinions acceptable in conversations with people
with whom our contacts may be relatively superficial are in the mundane sense of
the word “public opinions”, i.e., those we could conceivably express in to
relative strangers, such as in conversation with a taxi driver, or, in any
public place such as the waiting line for a bus, or, in the compartment of a
train — and, of course, in the interview arranged by a polling organization. In
a less trivial formulation: “public opinion
is an opinion in value-laden areas that can be
voiced in public and upon which actions can be based in public[6]”.

In our daily conversations, most people prefer to
express public opinions, i.e. views which are, or may be expected to be,
supported by others in our circle. If we plug opinions that are not shared by
others, we risk isolation. We may become odd men out and, at worst, we are
expelled from the group.

But how do we know public opinion? We constantly
scan for it, says the theory. But if everybody does, structural circumstances
may be decisive.

People who are well integrated into conversation
circles and networks (relatives, colleagues, neighbors, friends) are, in all
likelihood, adept at rapidly picking up what others think. This enables them to
give candid expression to their version of public opinion (and perhaps a few of
the odd aberrant personal opinion as well) without disturbing the group. They
know public opinion whether or not they have been exposed to the media.

Those who are poorly integrated into their
conversation circles, and therefore lack knowledge of what are serviceable
opinions, run more of a risk to “put their
foot in it”. Newspapers, radio and TV, rather
than personal contacts, are their principal source of information on what others
believe and think, i.e., which climate of opinion prevails. For them, the media
alone define the nature of current conventional wisdom and teach them public
opinion. From this perspective, the media teach them not so much what to believe
and think, but rather which opinions are acceptable in public intercourse. XE
"public opinion" \r "publicopinion1"

If there is any truth in all the talk about the
atomization of modern society, the number of people in the latter predicament is
growing, and the notion of a “mass society” is a reality. And in mass society
mass media rules. Thus we can conclude that the spiral of silence becomes more
relevant when related to the structural trends in modern society.

The public opinion in
editorial offices and studios

You cannot report about everything. The journalistic process is one of
never ending selection. The wire services present long menus. Editorial meetings
are held to decide which stories to pursue. The reporters who are given
assignment to pursue stories must sift and sort facts and views in the raw
material that they can muster. The sub-editors select among the stories
available what shall be published, what shall be outright rejected, what shall
be reworked, shortened or strengthened, and what shall remain in store for
another day. The board of directors has sifted and selected candidates for an
editor-in-chief, who together with colleagues have sifted and selected and
appointed various subeditors. Editorial policies have been hammered out from
many alternatives; options have been rejected and adopted. In this long chain of
picking and choosing lies also the details and colors that make a news story
come alive. The noble art of journalism is to make sure that life and reality
remains when the journalistic process comes to the end at the moment of
publication.

There is public opinion also in the editorial
offices and the studios of the mass media. It vibrates easily through the
typically open landscape of news-desks. Like other humans, the journalists and
photographers fear isolation if they deviate from public opinion at their place
of work. In some instances they have every reason to. Except in religious sects
and in leftist student groups have I have never seen so much pressure toward
consensus and conformity as in a large Swedish editorial office in the 1980s. In
an internal news-sheet the critique of the deviating colleagues was documented.
You could readily see the group pressure also in the dress of the staff which
was clean but sloppy; in no way must you dress so that you could be
taken for a person from the establishment.
Mobbing (bullying) of deviates, the ultimate form of isolation, did occur. In one instance
a journalist was mobbed even before he started his job at the paper. His sin: as
the previous step in his journalistic career, he had edited the membership
publication of the Federation of Employers. Certain positions were particularly
exposed; an editor with the highest integrity could became suspect — if he or
she edited the travel section and wrote about experiences in expensive and
exotic places. The amount of self-censorship such a climate of opinion can
exercise is considerable.

Research that is informed by the ideas of a
spiral of silence into the opinion climate of the editorial offices would more
than anything I can imagine illuminate the mechanisms of media power. What we
have so far of penetrating insights into this milieu comes, not from research,
but from thorough American court proceedings in connections in libel trials such
as Westmoreland versus Columbia Broadcasting System and Sharon versus Time.[7]

Freedom of Speech and
the Chance to be Heard

Our present-day legislation offers the free right
of establishment to anyone seeking to issue printed media. For broadcasting
media, most European countries (still) have restrictions on establishment that
are difficult to circumvent. What creates obstacles is not technology but
politicians. There is broad, unused scope for new local radio channels, and also
some room for local television.

The legislators seem to believe that, through the
Freedom of the Press Ordinances, they have guaranteed that citizens’ voices will
be heard in the media. The Swedish Ordinance entitles a “legally responsible
publisher” — who may be different from the owner — to disseminate opinions in
printed media without prior censorship. But for the participants in a conflict
of opinion, the problem remains: to gain a hearing, one must find a responsible
publisher who wishes to spread one’s opinion, and furthermore — here I speak
from personal experience — can prevail upon the employees to accept this
decision. Making one’s voice heard in the media is far from easy even for those
who represent Establishment values, and it is extremely difficult for anyone
representing opinions that deviate from conventional ones.

An abundance of opinions that lack a public forum
has, indeed, long been a typical feature of the climate of opinion in Western
publics: silent opinion XE "silent opinion" and public opinion appear to
coexist alongside each other. In the past decade, many ordinary opinions in my
country have had obvious difficulties in ex-
pressing themselves in our predominant media.
This applies to opinions on the ineffectiveness of aid to developing countries,
the immorality of Sweden’s policy of neutrality, deception in public sickness
insurance, immigrants’ criminality, the cruelty of the welfare state towards its
“clients”, the role of biological inheritance in behavior, the rights of gypsies
and Lapps, the outstanding capacity of state support to literature for creating
waste paper, the successes of Thatcherism, and a great deal else of interest to
future historians. A striking self-censorship is carried out by the climate of
opinion prevailing in newspapers’ editorial offices.

Professions’ and
Unions’ Power

Nowadays, newspaper owners exert no decisive
influence over the content of the daily press. Two circumstances have created an
entirely new situation: the professionalisation of journalism and the emergence
of strong trade-union rights in editorial offices.

In order for an occupation to become a profession
— like law, accountancy, medicine, dentistry and the clergy — its practitioners
must have a special university education that confers expert knowledge. These
days, journalists have their own colleges of journalism that train and prepare
students in the skills of the job: evaluating news items, writing reports,
conducting interviews and editing the results for printing or broadcasting.

Training in journalism is linked with the
existing traditions of the occupation. There is a German tradition of journalism
that regards the ultimate task of the journalist as to convey a
Weltanschauung — a philosophy of life. (Karl Marx XE "Marx, K" , of course,
worked in this tradition.) There is a British tradition of seeing the function
of journalism as providing a good story — that is, news or a report with
intrigue, drama and a sense of immediacy. There is also an American journalistic
tradition whereby the primary task is the exposé, or “muckraking” —
exposing evils, misuse of power and the like. Journalism is not immune to the
fickleness of fashion: for the time being (since Watergate) the muckraking
tradition is held in the highest regard.

By virtue of its expert knowledge, a profession
seeks a monopoly in its sphere of activity. The art of medicine must be
practiced by doctors; other practitioners are dubbed quacks. Only a qualified
lawyer may work as a barrister or solicitor, and so forth. The voice of the
public is seldom heard in the courtroom — the lawyer, as the citizen’s
representative, serves this purpose. This promotes the rule of law. Similarly,
journalists nowadays consider themselves representatives of the
public in the public sector. This they regard as promoting democracy,
but on this point there is no proof and theoretical objections abound.

With ample justification, it may be asserted that
journalists’ expertise and skills are in no way as wide-ranging as those of a
doctor’s, lawyer’s or accountant’s training. Anyone with good judgment and an
ability to write can become a journalist without undergoing specialist training.
But in practice young men and women without formal training in journalism seldom
secure jobs in large editorial offices these days.

Hand in hand with the professional monopoly of
the practice of an occupation, one finds in the professions that control of
activities is exercised by colleagues, not by owners, administrators, public
authorities or other outsiders. It is the chief physician, not the hospital
director or the county-council politician, who determines diagnosis, medication
and treatment.

Through their professionalization, journalists
have acquired a monopoly that decides how space in the media is to be used. They
must follow certain rules, for example:

Journalists cannot base their stories merely on
their opinions; they must have a source for what they write.

News must be separated from editorials, and, of
course, from advertisements. Hard news must be separated from news analysis, and
also from soft opinion.

Day-to-day events, so called news-pegs, must be
separated from staged events.

Every side in a controversy must be given a
hearing in reporting, and corrections and replies inserted.

Editorial offices graciously allow a few per cent
of the space on newspaper pages to a letter or debate section in which readers
can take the initiative to bring matters close to their hearts to public
attention. But journalists determine which contributions are accepted and which
people are allowed to make themselves heard. The cultural pages are increasingly
seldom written by outside intellectuals; cultural journalists and contracted
writers begin to predominate. Here dies before our eyes a great European
newspaper tradition.

In Sweden, the monopoly power of
this journalist profession has gone hand in hand with trade-union influence.
Swedish journalists’ trade unions now have a decisive say in editorial offices’
staff policy. According to special clauses in the co-determination legislation,
the trade union should not exert any influence over
chief editors’ appointments. But in practice the
local unions wield tremendous influence — everything from a right of veto to the
de facto right to appoint the chief editor. For other editorial staff, there is
a consultation procedure that would make the most active unionists in the public
sector envious.

Points 7 and 8 in the agreement between the
journalists’ union and Svenska Dagbladet XE "Svenska Dagbladet" that has
been in force since 1983 illustrate this point:

“The union must be informed of all job
applications. In recruitment, the union takes part in the work of preparation
and selection. The union is given the opportunity to meet candidates under
consideration. In temporary staff appointments, too, the union must be informed
of applications and given the opportunity to express an opinion.”

In Sweden, the close marriage between the
profession and the trade union starts as early as in the college of journalism.
Believe it or not, the students’ union and the trade union there are usually
identical!

Accordingly, we reach the absurd stage at which
it is much easier for a person trained as a journalist to write about medicine
in the newspaper than for a doctor, for a trained journalist to write about law
than a lawyer, for a trained journalist to write about business than a business
graduate, and for a journalist to write about strategic issues than an officer.

The profession of journalism in Sweden is a network that rivals
the London press of Palmerston’s day. The key editorial offices in Stockholm —
those of Eko on the radio, Rapport and Aktuellt on
television, the news agency TT and the major dailies, Dagens Nyheter,
Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen and Aftonbladet — are staffed by the
same network. Most have more in common than their certificate from the School of
Journalism.

They socialize in their spare time. They are, in
fact, partly forced together by the other élites’ disdain for “hacks”. When they
change jobs — a frequent occurrence — they go to another of the key editorial
offices and obtain higher pay and more similar opinions. Journalists from
different key editorial offices often cohabitate or marry one another. The net
result is that in Stockholm there is in practice only one, repeat one, approach
to news. Diversity is an illusion. Add to this the fact that the Stockholm
editors’ news valuation each day is, in many respects, the following day’s news
valuation in the rest of the country. This may be the curse of a small country,
but on some scale the phenomenon seem worldwide[8].
As Western democracies go, postwar Sweden has had a strikingly limited range of
approved opinions. The key editorial staffs of the mass media feed the people
with
unremarkable, easily digestible subjects and views, and the outcome is
public opinion that is lagom, as the Swedes say. In the political sphere
this has usually means a compromise acceptable to the Social Democrats and the
labor unions. There is, in fact, something a trifle ridiculous about a West
European country where the left wing for the entire post war period has been
unable to envisage a communist in the government or as a provincial governor,
and the right wing for several decades (until 1991) could not openly contemplate
a conservative prime minister or minister of foreign affairs.

Advising politicians

Modern career politicians are among the groups
who have poor personal “grass-roots” contact with what the general public is
talking about. They know what is said and accepted in conference rooms, at
municipal offices and among their friends at party headquarters. They are also
able to keep in touch with the views of various organizations’ representatives,
who can be assembled for a meeting or consulted by telephone. But nowadays such
representatives are mostly graduates who know everything about their
organization except ordinary members’ chitchat.

The work situation of career politicians thus
renders them unfamiliar with opinion trends among ordinary voters. They resemble
the many people who live in isolation from everyday conversations. Although they
sometimes move in everyday circles, they are stamped as “powermongers” and
“authorities” and, as a result, treated with a certain reservation.

Career politicians — like the portion of their
voters who live in isolation — thus become helplessly dependent on mass media
for their grasp of public opinion.

This helps explain the media’s influence on
contemporary politics. Power is not primarily located in leading articles which
aim to tell politicians what to believe and do. Power lies in the fact that
journalists influence on what is acceptable current public opinion in a form
that is immediately accessible to those who need it — politicians in particular.

To advise politicians as a pollster is a never
ending assignment to inform and remind them of the state of public opinion
climate in key segments of the electorate, and, at the same time, the public
opinion climate in the editorial offices.

Politicians today cannot survive without media
skills. But they must not be taken in by the television and the press. I have
never felt it appropriate to advise a conservative party to run an election
campaign primarily through the big media
of journalism. There are too many elements of
individualism and hierarchy in the party creed that do not sit well with the
media gatekeepers. As an election campaign develops, you may need to bypass the
editorial climate of media by paid advertisements in the media, public meetings,
personal canvassing knocking at many doors, letter campaigns, direct mail
promotions, and political telemarketing.

How To Discover Media
Bias

Mary Douglas, the British anthropologist, maintains that there are a limited
number of myths about nature in the world. The main ones can be illustrated by
how a ball rolls on a surface[9].

The first notion conceives of nature as
benign and generous. It can be recreated. Even if you exploit it, it will
in time return to its previous state of equilibrium. In other words, the ball
rolls back to the bottom of the trough. This view is common among
industrialists.

The myth of capricious nature has the ball rolling anywhere on a flat
plane. There is no knowing what it will do next, and no use theorizing
about it. This gives grounding for the fatalist whose grounded belief
that in anything-can-happen is at least theoretically safe from
surprises sprung by nature.

Fatalists

The myth of fragile nature has the ball on top of a mound, delicately
poised in the only place it can be in equilibrium. The smallest shift
will roll it off the landscape altogether. For an example of a theory
based on this kind of myth the authors cite the Malthusian prophecy of
overpopulation.

Communidards

The myth that nature
is robust has the ball in the bottom of a curve; which ever way it is
pushed off centre it can only roll back into position again. All
perturbations will work out for the good. This is the myth that
encourages bold, individualistic experimentation, expansion, and
large-scale technological development.

Entrepreneurial Expansionists

When nature is robust
within limits the ball is in a dip between two hillocks; it can roll
within specific limits and be expected to come back safely, but too big
a push risks sending it over the edge of the containing frame. This is
the myth to encourage risk-averse planning controls, government
intervention, restrictions on the market.

Hierarchists

Another view holds that nature can be utilized
but that it is capricious. You have to struggle with it continuously,
like the farmer who must contend with changeable weather conditions when
harvesting his crops. The ball can roll here or there on a plane surface. You
may want to steer it, but it defies control.

The third myth conceives of nature as tolerant
within certain limits. Man must confine himself to these limits if he wishes to
avoid disaster and nature’s perverse side. If you are not careful the ball may
be forced out of the trough where it belongs, with unforeseeable consequences.

According to the fourth myth nature is
ephemeral and volatile. It can turn the tables on us if we are thoughtless
and reckless. The ball perches on the peak of the trough and threatens to roll
down at any minute. This view is common in the periphery of society.

At the turn of the century the European burghers
held that nature was benign and robust. The first generations of socialists were
on the whole in agreement. Today, however, several grass-roots movements view
nature as ephemeral and volatile and argue that radical changes in our lifeways
are imperative. This is also a common view among journalists. The media have a very evident bias: they
present nature as ephemeral to a much greater extent than both laymen and
natural scientists.[10]

So much for the nature of nature. Now for the
nature of society. Again we follow the arguments of Mary Douglas.

In the main, when we contemplate society we do so
in accordance with one of three basic ideological positions.

The first emphasizes individuality. One
takes every opportunity to distinguish oneself from other people. It is likely
that individualists fear social isolation less than others. The individualist
prefers self-regulation to centralized control. He favors networks rather than
organizations and the market rather than bureaucracy. The minimal centralized
authority that he can countenance would be that which protects the right of
private ownership and upholds contracts. “Stories that stress individual
achievement or the desirability of deregulation or the virtues of markets would
be biased in their direction,” says Aaron Wildavsky[12].

The second stresses hierarchy. One strives
to preserve and stabilize the differences that exist in society. There are
differences between those who are law-abiding and those who are criminal,
between men and women, between young and old. There are, above all, disparities
between people who have more or less of the cardinal values in society: the
powerful and the powerless, rich and poor, the knowledgeable with good grades
and the ignorant with poor grades, those who have found salvation and those who
are damned, between those with good taste and those with bad taste, those with
high moral standards and people with low moral standards. Hierarchical ideology
organizes life in accordance with such stratification. Those who embrace this
ideology usually prefer an organization with stable ranks to a market that can
give rise to disorder and untidy ranks of nouveau riche. “Stories that praise
traditional moral norms or excoriate deviance or defend the nation and its
institutions would reflect a hierarchical bias,” says Wildavsky.

The third position emphasizes egalitarianism.
One strives to minimize disparities between social categories. The good things
in life — as well as the bad — are to be shared by all in a spirit of
solidarity. Young and old. men and women, native-born and immigrants are to be
treated the same. There are to be no class differences. All are to enjoy the same living conditions. Wildavsky summarizes the bias that egalitarians introduce
into journalism: “Stories on the desirability of reducing disparities in power
or wealth or that criticize existing authority or unmask hidden hierarchies in
public life reveal an egalitarian bias.”

It is difficult to wholeheartedly maintain the
ideals of egalitarianism except in small groupings (or sects or cells) without
elaborate staffs and officials where everyone is supposed to act in terms of a
universal brotherhood or sisterhood. Here the reign of the spiral of silence is
supreme. In such egalitarian groups the fear of isolation is very high and very
realistic. They often split, and the deviants form their own group. The
egalitarians seeking an impact for their ideology on a grander scale may try an
alliance with the central powers to realize equality through legislation or
taxation, and government enforcement. In this process the egalitarian ideology
easily becomes corrupted by the hierarchy of the state. Such was the fate of the Realsozialismus.

Ways of looking at nature and views of society have some points in common. The
individualist would, for example, have difficulty in continuing to enhance his
distinctiveness if he thought of nature as ephemeral and believed that pursuing
his individuality could destroy it. It is more convenient for him to conceive of
nature as benign. In like manner, a person of
egalitarian persuasion would have difficulty in maintaining that all resources
should be shared equally if he thought of nature as benign and extravagantly
generous. But if nature is ephemeral it is easier to accept the premise that no
one should have more than anyone else.

Opposition to individualism and hierarchy is most
evident in the media. The media are not shy about congratulating themselves on
their perfidy to all ideals except journalistic ones. In reality, today’s media
have an overarching loyalty: editorial staffs construct news and views that have
an egalitarian slant and reflect the idea that nature is ephemeral. They see to
it that news that expresses a belief in authority or is sympathetic to social
inequities or presents nature as robust is reported only briefly, if at all, or,
is banished to the demeaning “letters to the editor” section. The same fate
often befalls news that expresses a keen and joyous individualism; such material
can also be satanized as egoism. (Exceptions to this can occur on the sport
pages.)

It is not ill will that governs such editorial judgment. It is rather the result
of a narrowness of vision common to journalists and their editors, that is
regarded (believe it or not) as eminently “responsible” by those involved. In addition,
egalitarianism is promoted by the market requirement of having a large reading,
listening, or viewing audience. For egalitarianism, rightly or wrongly, is
believed to be the most common ideology of the masses."

The leftist
leanings of journalists is an old song in many countries, but true. The general
biases we have described do not suggest any future change in this state of
affairs. Let me add some good data from my own country of
Sweden.

In the 1970s and 1980s in Swedish editorial
offices it was axiomatic that journalism and the defense of capitalism are
irreconcilable. In late 1989, at he time of the East German uprising leading to
the fall of the Berlin Wall, a survey of 931 journalists was conducted in
connection with an official investigation into the power structure in Sweden. It
revealed that one-third, 32% of newsmen and 41% of the newswomen in the nation
supported the Swedish Communist party (vpk) or the Greens (mp).[13] In the election campaign of 1991 opinion polls
clearly showed at an early stage that these two parties would fare badly. One
can therefore understand why the Swedish Union of Journalists responded to a
conflict with the provincial press (FLT) by threatening to strike on election
day. One simply did not want the election results this time. The Greens were
dislodged from the riksdag anyway, and the communists just barely managed
to retain some seats. Together they received 7.9 per cent of the popular vote.
These 7.9 per cent certainly have a hefty representation in the media!

Future Possibilities

Are there any prospects of being able to break up
the opinion monopoly, the chorus of one-sided voices on egalitarian society and
the hymn to nature ephemeral?

Many see some hope in increased owner
responsibility and a return of power from the journalistic profession back to
the owners. There were more newspapers in Europe one hundred years ago than
there are today; they had very different profiles and very different owner
interests. But since then the newspaper publishers have learned to concentrate
on the financial aspects and have left the words and pictures for others to take
care of. Can the owners relearn the old ways? Can they find boards of directors
immune to pressures from journalists? I doubt it.

Others hope to bring vigorous intellectual
capacities and Bildung to editorial staffs. In Europe we have had a
tradition whereby a period as the editor-in-chief
of a newspaper can be part of a long intellectual and academic career. But today
this seems to be self-evident only in Eastern Europe. where several leading
dissidents have become editors-in-chief. My experience from Sweden in the ‘80s
has been that there is compact opposition to the inclusion of such outside
capacity: it is driven out by the alliance between professional journalists and
the unions.

One can also pin one’s hopes on technological
development. Low-cost local radio stations, moderately priced desk-top
publishing, reasonably cheap video cameras and equipment for editing video
tapes, cable TV and other electronic networks, data bases, the indispensable
news letters for those who really want information in a special field — all
present increasingly viable alternatives to the massive monopoly of opinion.

One tried and proved solution is to balance
editorial staffs with outside columnists. All American columnists are not lone
intellectuals who develop opinions on their own. Often a whole staff of
researchers and writers help produce the admired article by the familiar
by-line. Such columnists can stay clear of editorial departments and remain
uncorrupted by their egalitarian climate of opinion. Through a judicious choice
of columnists and by giving them ample space, diversity can replace the
ideological narrow-mindedness of editorial mentality.

[2] One can argue about the number
of life-spheres and their delineation. See, for example, Lawrence A.
Scaff , Fleeing the Iron Cage, University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 94-96.

[3]Karl Marx XE "Marx, K" and
Friedrich Engels, The Civil War in the United States,
International Publishers, New York, 1974, 124-125. [I found this passage
quoted on page 126 in Graham Murdock, "Large
Corporations and the Control of the Communications Industries" in
Michael Gurevich et al. (editors), Culture,
Society and the Media, Methuen, London, 1982, pp. 118 150.]

[5]The first major work with this
orientation is Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence, Free Press, Glencoe Ill, 1955.

[6]This formulation is found in the
appendix with definitions in Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, "The Theory of Public Opinion: The Concept of the
Spiral of Silence", in James A Anderson (editor),
Communication Yearbook, vol 14, Sage, London, 1991, pp. 256-287.

[8]In Europe we lack broad research
into the media elites of the type represented in the United States by S.
Robert Lichter XE "Lichter, S R" , Stanley Rothman and
Linda Lichter, The Media Elite, America's New Power
Brokers, Bethseda, Maryland, Adler & Adler, 1986.

In the election emerged a
new party of discontent (nyd), stressing individualist values. It
obtained 6.7% in the election. It did not exist at the time of the
survey of journalists. In the media it was treated as entertainment, not
as politics.